Dr. Dan Gilbert - Surprising Information

This interview with Prof. Dan Gilbert was super fun to watch, and I got lots of cool insights from it. In particular, the most surprising piece of information came about around half way through the interview, when Dr. Goodman and Dr. Gilbert discussed Climate Change and trying to change people's behaviors/opinions. Dr. Goodman talked about how she initially thought that if scientists were able to reduce the uncertainty of their models and communicate this to the public, then this would be directly correlated with an increase in public wariness/diligence over their sustainability efforts. However, she discovered that this wasn't the case, and Dr. Gilbert chimed in by explaining how scientists saying that their models are arbitrarily "more accurate" and thus should be followed would only "fall upon deaf ears." Instead, he explains, the real best way to get people to change their behavior is for humans to see other humans change their behavior as well. He cited the example of how even the most staunchly conservative politicians recycle, even though a hundred years ago the most liberal people around probably weren't even recycling. And this is because everyone started doing it—the city standardizes it, your neighbors put out their recycling, etc. Thus, it was super surprising and interesting to hear how just hitting people with "statistics and data" may not always be the best way to change their behaviors. Instead, it's more of a social game.